Clean Vanilla Cupcakes and Other Updates

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I have a lot I want to talk about on this blog in the next few weeks. First of all, I went on my honeymoon to Morocco and enjoyed the most magical week of my life. I have lots of stories and photos to share soon.

Secondly, my transition back into real life since returning from vacation has been rough. Jet lag had me in bed at 9 and up at 5 almost every day last week. Portland's weather has me down and I've felt generally unmotivated after the high of being away. I'll go into more detail about this soon too.

This week, I'm trying to get my mojo back. My 34th birthday is coming up on Saturday and I have two big wishes: 1.) to eat white cake and 2.) to use clean ingredients for this cake.

Enter ifoodreal.com, where I found this Clean Eating Vanilla Cupcake recipe. I made a few small tweaks to veganize it and cut down on sugar, but in general this recipe is ready to go as-is. It also couldn't be simpler: you just combine the wet ingredients, add and combine the dry ingredients, and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. It makes 12 big cupcakes as 207.3 calories apiece or twice as many mini cupcakes.

Let me tell you: the batter tasted exactly like white cake. After they baked the banana flavor came out more, so it tasted a little less like a cupcake and a little more like a muffin. It was still good though. If you're not into banana, skip it and stick to the maple syrup or honey.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake the macadamia nuts on a cookie sheet for 8-10 minutes (or just throw them in with the cupcakes for the last 10 minutes).

Toss the baked macadamia nuts in a food processor and blend into a meal. You may recall that I broke my food processor, so I used a blender. This made things a little tricky but not undoable. Set the nut meal mixture aside.

Throw your coconut into the food processor / blender and blend until smooth and creamy. If you're using a food processor, this could take 5-10 minutes. If you're using a blender, this could take FOREVER. I added water to speed up the process.

Add vanilla and blend and then add powdered sugar one tablespoon at a time until it's as sweet as you want it. I generally like these types of things to be less sweet.

Who says you can't eat your cake and eat it too? White cake and clean baking: what a perfect marriage. This feels like a good first step to getting my mojo back.